Throughout 2017 deity themed MOBA SMITE has been mixing things up via some limited time adventure events. Covering some different ground, these diversions have had varying degrees of success. So, while the kart racing event turned out to be about as much fun as slamming your head in a car door, it was the Trials of King Hercules – a run based cooperative mode, that plays like an old-school MMO dungeon – that ended up being quite popular with the SMITE community.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that for the last adventure of 2017, developer Hi-Rez Studios decided to follow up The Trials of King Hercules, with Shadows Over Hercopolis, its second stab at a co-op dungeon crawler.

This time, everyone’s favourite SMITE god Loki has kidnapped Hercules, so it’s up to you – and two companions – to fight your way through areas inspired by Norse mythology, take on multi-stage bosses, and collect loot that’ll make you stronger for your next attempt.

While the run-based nature of this mode can make things hard going at first, as was the case with the Trials of King Hercules, there’s a nice challenge to finding the strongest trio of gods from those available, as well as refining your strategy so you can overcome the obstacles in your path as efficiently as possible.

If the Trials of King Hercules was anything to go by, then the three different difficulty modes available will also mean that you’ll be able to play this mode for quite a while, and with gems – SMITE’s real money currency – and cosmetic item chests up for grabs as a reward for making it deep into the adventure, then the SMITE faithful will no doubt be hammering away at it for many weeks to come.

While the mode is free for everyone to play, if you’re looking to invest much time into it, then it’s worth picking up the Trickster Bundle. Costing 900 gems – around £10 in real world cash – this pack not only contains a number of cosmetic items – one of which is a pretty cool Loki skin – but also a number of unlocks for the adventure mode that’ll help you accumulate items for your armoury even quicker.

Shadows Over Hercopolis is out now on PlayStation 4, and is available for anyone to play for free via the SMITE client.

A gamer since the 80s, Alex longs for a return to consoles with wood panels and games with manuals the size of phone books. When not working on his time machine he spends his time playing games like any normal person — with the controls inverted.